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Checkpoint Inhibition for Patients With Colorectal Cancer and High Microsatellite Instability
At the 2023 World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancers, Kristen Ciombor, MD, Ingram Cancer Center at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, discussed the opportunities for checkpoint inhibition with high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) colorectal cancer.
Transcript:
I am Kristen Ciombor, I'm an associate professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee. And at the 2023 World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancers, I'm talking about immune checkpoint inhibitors in MSI-high colorectal cancer.
We've known for about a decade now that microsatellite instability or mismatch repair deficiency is an excellent prognostic biomarker in colorectal cancer. And now, we know that it is a predictive biomarker for response to immunotherapy as well. We've initially learned that in the refractory metastatic setting, that immune checkpoint inhibitors can be very useful whether it is in monotherapy or in combination PD-1 inhibition plus anti-CTLA4 antibodies. Then we learned that we can actually move that up into the first line and so now we recommend that patients are tested for microsatellite instability at diagnosis at any stage of disease.
What's been most exciting recently has been the advent of utilization of immunotherapy in localized stages of diseases. In colorectal cancer, specifically in rectal cancer in the locally advanced setting, as well as localized colon cancer. I think this is a really exciting time to be looking at immunotherapy and MSI-high colorectal cancer and we still have many answers to really develop in terms of duration of therapy, how we can make sure that this is working for everyone. But overall, it's an exciting time in this field.
Source:
Ciombor K. Checkpoint Inhibitors in MSI-H Colorectal Cancer. Presented at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancers; June 28-July 1, 2023; Barcelona, Spain.
